Rand Paul Calls Prison for Pot “A Terrible Crime”

On Friday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul stopped by to talk with the women of The View. After first describing the chaotic occasions of the previous couple of months, the junior senator from the Bluegrass State addressed America’s mounting anger administration points and the racial disparity brought on by our federal marijuana regulation.

Once Sen. Paul regaled Joy Behar, Meghan McCain, and Sunny Hostin together with his harrowing story of being tackled by a neighbor and shot at by a stranger, Whoopi Goldberg requested the senator a fairly poignant query: “Before we go, you are feeling like ah – marijuana ought to be legalized within the United States?”

Paul, a one-time Republican candidate to be President of the United States, commented on the matter throughout a 2015 debate.

“We say we like the 10th Amendment, until we start talking about [marijuana]. And I think the federal government has gone too far, I think that the war on drugs has had a racial outcome, and really has been something that has really damaged our inner cities.”

Paul defined that, along with customers being incapacitated by the medicine themselves, “we damage them again by incarcerating them and then preventing them from getting employment over time.”

Sen. @RandPaul shares why he believes it is a “terrible crime to put people in jail for pot,” and explains how the statistics present a extreme racial inequality in relation to who’s persecuted for marijuana. https://t.co/f8u2wc159S pic.twitter.com/6Prl1C8ncc

“I think it’s a terrible crime to put people in jail for pot,” the Kentucky senator stated. “And I think if you look at who’s in jail for pot, it’s primarily black and brown people. Its poor people, people who don’t have enough for an attorney.”

According to Paul, “the number one impediment to voting rights anymore, is actually having a criminal record.”

Disproportionately divided alongside racial strains, even in states which have legalized grownup use, marijuana arrests stay elevated for these traditionally disenfranchised. Less than equitable, a 2016 report ready by the Colorado Department of Public Safety found the lower within the variety of marijuana arrests was highest for whites.

Per the report, “The number of marijuana arrests decreased by 51% for Whites, 33% for Hispanics, and 25% for African‐Americans. The marijuana arrest rate for African‐Americans (348 per 100,000) was almost triple that of Whites (123 per 100,000) in 2014.”

“If you look at people who smoke marijuana, white people and black people smoke it at the same percentage,” Paul stated. “There’s something wrong there.”